Cicadas

In the parks of Hanoi and dragon like environment of Hoa Lu you hear cicadas whose calls seem to hold up the humidity. The river, like the Brazos, isn’t clear but it has subtle interconnecting colors the same as any masterful painting. On the road to and from Hoa Lu rice fields hug the highway like cotton does in the South. Women beyond their years hunched over planting in a rhythmic fashion that echos thousands of years of humanity. Houses have been torn in half to build new roads. Modernization built by each fold of tar. Yet there is nothing as modern as the children that find a game in stones or cicadas’ calls shivering the air. Life and home are everywhere, just in different forms. There is no one thing or time that is modern, but there are different ways to view the world. You are home and ‘modern’ when my past and present meet in the sounds of cicadas, in the sweat of humidity or in the smile of a stranger.